Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all my readers. Hope your Christmasses were good. Ours was. I got a mug and Andy got a CD. We're going to the Lambi Queen tonight for New Year's Eve. The steel band will be playing. Aaaaaaaaagh! There's only so much Island In The Sun a person can take. However, it is near, it is loud and there isn't anything else.

We've been invited out for a sail tomorrow with an American guy called Chris. He's going to take us to a little island where we can go snorkelling while he collects shells. Sounds nice.

Yesterday we had fun watching a couple of guys who were supposed to be building, but they were climbing a tree trying to shake out an iguana. The iguana dropped out and ran across the road, where the guy who was supposed to catch it squealed like a girly and ran away. Tee hee. They said I should try it. They said it tastes better than chicken. But I like to watch the iguana swaying in the tree top and eating the flowers.

Must go. Going to have pizza tonight before we go out to celebrate.

Christmas preparations

We went to Hillsborough on the bus. Andy went one way and I went the other and we met again twenty minutes later with all our Christmas presents bought. I can't tell you what I got Andy until after I've given it to him. I can tell you, though, that I only went to one shop and picked at random. If there were a bookshop on the Island, I might have gone there, but there isn't one. We pick up used books which yachtsmen leave at the yacht club and at the launderette. We also use the library, of course.

Later I'm going into Hillsborough again to see what treats we can find to eat. I did see some rather expensive gherkins in one of the supermarkets. We have been invited up to Ted's house for Christmas day, with his three children, Tina and her two kids, and Hutch, who is still hobbling on crutches due to his infected foot. I've found out that Ted is coooking turkey and sprouts and wants me to make mince pies! I thought I'd got away from all that. We may make and take some veggie option made of breadfruit, plantain and beans, flavoured with onion, garlic, chilli, nutmeg and ginger. (This, as ever, all depends on what is available at the vegetable stalls.) We can always put hot West Indian sauce on the turkey and dip the mince pies in rum.

Happy Christmas to all my readers, if there still are any.

Harvey Vale Government School Christmas Party

"I want a fish skin, a Christmas fish skin." "No. It's fish kit," says Andy into my ear, "I want a fish kit." I'm singing along to the Parang song which is blasting out of the black speaker boxes, the size of a small house. The baseline is pinning me against the perimeter fence and palpating my sternum, forcing my heart to beat in rhythm with the tune. We hang around watching people arrive, drink a beer - yes, beer for sale at the junior school Christmas party. I don't think they bother about licences and that sort of thing. Suddenly the big tamarind tree lights up, with no ceremony or announcement. It looks wonderful. It is strung about with what looks like a hundred fifty different strands of fairy lights, most of which light up. After a lot more milling around and people buying barbecued chicken, the entertainment begins. Each class puts on a show, a song, a dance or a poem. They appear in random order and not as written on the programme. Then some adult women sing some Christmas carols. We can only hear the woman in the middle who is standing in front of the microphone. I think hers may not have been the best voice of the choir. A local man wearing a lampshade on his head and carrying a tall stick proceed with a display of yogic bendiness. He blows a conch then stomps barefoot on broken glass, before rolling his naked torso across the glass. After demonstrating his ability to walk with his legs bent over his shoulders, head between his feet, he exits before anyone has a chance to applaud. The teacher making the announcements does warn the children not to try these things at home. Later, much later, a Parang band comes on and plays some guitars and maracas and sings made up songs about the local people. These may have been hilarious to those who had a clue what they were on about.

Parang is an annual music competition in which songs are performed which take the mick out of local people and events. It will be happening in Hillsborough this weekend. As we wouldn’t have any idea of what they were singing about, even if we could understand the words the performers are singing, and as all the tunes sound exactly the same, in a calypso style with more rhythm, we probably won’t go.

Off to Hillsborough on the bus later to do our Christmas shopping. That’s if we can get any money from the ATM, as it wasn’t working yesterday.

Rescue Boat Rescue

Well, we had a bit of excitement at the weekend. Kevin, a young sailing coach, came up from Grenada to give extra teaching to the kids in the Tyrrel Bay Junior Sailing Club (all donations desperately needed and gratefully received). Hutch, an American who lives on a boat in the bay, had said he’d organise a motor boat to use for the weekend. As Hutch has an infected foot and has been on crutches for 6 weeks, he got permission for Andy to drive the “Rescue Boat”, thus leaving Ted to supervise on the beach. The boat we borrowed belongs to Dan, an American who also lives on a boat in the bay. He gave Andy careful instructions about how to start the motor and not revving it too much. On the Sunday I decided I’d go out with Andy and Kevin on the boat, as you get a good view of the yachts at anchor from out there. Everything was going wonderfully. There was a nice breeze and the kids were doing well, until the engine mounting bracket broke off and Andy found himself hanging onto a heavy outboard motor by the twist grip. As it tried to fall to the bottom of the sea, the grip twisted in Andy’s hand and revved even more. He was desperately hanging onto it while trying to reach the stop button with his left hand, as the motor jumped around in the water. Luckily, and through sheer tenacity, he managed to get the thing turned off and lifted it into the boat. The Optimists sailed away and we were left drifting. It wasn’t that bad, we had oars. Hutch had accompanied the Optimists in his little sailing dinghy, which he uses as a tender to his yacht, so he sailed up to us, dropped his mast and assessed the situation. He had a cellphone (that’s American for mobile) so started phoning people he knew with boats who could come and get us back to the shore. He managed to raise Tim, an English guy who lives on a boat in the bay, who manages the boatyard. That’s Tim towing us in in his rib. Dan, the owner of the boat, had also been accompanying the young sailors in his little sailing dinghy, which he uses as a tender to his yacht. He sailed onto the beach and Andy had to tell him he’d broken his engine. It turned out (to Andy’s relief) that it had already been broken by getting jammed under the dock at Bequia . He’d had it temporarily fixed. It’s very difficult to weld cast aluminium, he admitted. I suggested he bought a new bracket for the thing. I also suggested that he needed a little piece of rope to tie the engine onto the boat. We always tie our outboard onto our inflatable, just in case of mishap. It’s not always possible to retrieve things once they’re on the bottom of the sea.

This little event is very typical of the sort of thing that goes on here every day. Things work sporadically, if at all. Things get half fixed up, then left to fall apart again. Everything takes much longer than you can possibly imagine to get done, then it only gets done in a half-arsed way. We kind of like it, though.

We were pleased to see that after Kevin had gone back to Grenada, some of the kids spent the rest of the daylight on Sunday out in the Optimists practising what they’d been taught. We later learned that they had been going round to the yachts asking for food!

And, yes, there do seem to be a lot of single blokes living on boats here.

This morning Andy has gone down to the bay to continue working on the GP14s. He’s having some small success getting the resin and fibreglass matting to stick. I’m left here to battle with the ants. I made another batch of lemonade yesterday and must have got the outside of the bag of sugar sticky, because when I looked in the cupboard later there was an army of ants marching through and swarming inside the bag of sugar. They had actually eaten through the plastic bag to get in there. I threw that lot out, then found they’d eaten into a bag of flour. A blast of Baygon put paid to that offensive. We’re now keeping everything in the fridge, even the rice. I don’t think even they can eat their way through metal.

This evening we’re going up to the junior school (Harvey Vale Government School) to see the Christmas lights switched on. I think they will have decorated the huge tree which grows in their yard. They children have also been practising songs and dances for the occasion. It’s supposed to start at 6.30, which means that people will start turning up at about 8, Caribbean time.

Oh yes, and the electrician eventually made it to fix our shower, only two weeks after he’d said he’d come, and several phone calls from our landlord telling us he was on his way. He explained to me why he’d taken so long, but I couldn’t understand much of what he said, except for his last sentence which was, “A man needs to rest.”

Tropical Torpor

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to sit down and write. It’s not because I have nothing to say, but because I can’t be arsed. That’s what the Caribbean does to you. We spend hours sitting on the balcony either reading or just staring. I just spent about half an hour watching a little lizard stalking its prey. I understand the expression “leaping lizards” now, because they do little leaps from the floor to the wall, say. They catch flies so quickly that you can’t see how they’ve done it. One moment they’re staring intently, keeping low and moving in ultra slo-mo, then there they are munching away on a big juicy fly. It takes quite a bit of chewing and manoeuvring around the mouth until they can be swallowed. Fascinating.

So we read, stare at the horizon, “Look, there’s a big catamaran coming in.” “Oh yes. Looks like British/French/Dutch/Canadian (delete which inapplicable) ensign.” “Is that Selassie going out?” Selassie is the name of the boat of a local fisherman. I think it’s also his name. “See that blue boat over there?” “Where?” “Next to the entrance to the mangroves.” “Yes.” “That’s the one that takes charters to the Antarctic.” “Why would anyone want to go down there?” “Don’t know.” “Oh, it’s lunch time.” “Jolly good.” Etc.

We have managed to get our library cards filled out, with the names of two references. We got Ted and the girl in Alexis Supermarket. We took them into the library in Hillsborough yesterday and handed them to the librarian. She told us to go and take out a book. We spent quite a long time trying to find something that we wanted to read. I was looking for something on the flora and fauna of the West Indies. The non-fiction section has about 9 feet of books in random order. There were quite a few very old ‘O’ level chemistry texts and some children’s books. I did find quite a good work on the trees and plants of the West Indies, but it was in the reference section. This section was also in random order. The adult fiction was largely in alphabetical order of author and eventually we managed to find a couple of novels to take away. There was no computerised system, or even Brown’s pockets. The librarian wrote down on a sheet of paper the name of the book next to our names. We’re allowed two books for two weeks. I don’t know what the fines are. After I’d gone a little way up the road, I turned and went back in. “Excuse me”, I said, “do you need anyone to help out in the library? I used to work in one. I noticed there are a lot of books waiting to be shelved.” (There were almost as many books on the reshelving shelves as on the proper shelves – random order, adult and junior mixed, fiction and non-fiction mixed.) She told me that she does have an assistant, but she was on vacation. She gave me a phone no. to ring though, to volunteer myself. I’ve decided not to, though. Can’t be arsed. I could go in and sort that place out in two half days, but I think I’ll leave it as it is.

As far as our house goes, we now have three curtains up and some holes drilled in the walls of the other bedroom, ready for the wires and curtains, should they appear. We also have a (small) mirror over the bathroom sink. A few days ago we came home to find a table had arrived unannounced. We are still waiting for the electrician to turn up with a new element for our shower heater. Whenever we see Joy, we tell him, he makes a phone call and says the electrician is coming today. He doesn’t. Haven’t seen much of Joy lately. He’s moved his sheep and goats out of our garden now.

We sowed some seeds a week ago, and they are mainly now bursting out of their little pots. We bought some packets of seed with us: tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, aubergines, peppers, lettuce, basil, parsley and coriander. With the exception of the parsley, they all germinated really quickly. The courgettes have now got their proper leaves on and are about 4” tall. We also sowed some seeds we saved from stuff we’d eaten: melon, papaya, avocado, passion fruit and orange. Only the melon have germinated, so far. The avocado stones we put in, because when we took them out of the fruits, they already had roots growing. The avocado here are big and round – not pear-shaped at all. They have a yellower flesh and are more flavourful than the ones we buy in England, being soft and creamy and almost sweet. We keep saying, we must think about where we are going to plant these things. I’m now saying we have to move beyond the thinking and prepare some soil. It’s too hot now. Maybe tomorrow.

Being a veggie here is just as difficult as it is in France or Spain – so we don’t eat out. There is actually an excellent pizzeria just down our hill and we have eaten there. We do have to watch the budget, though, and food is more expensive here than in Europe. You can buy a pineapple for less in Waitrose, than you can here. The beer, however, is cheaper and the rum is much much cheaper. We just buy whatever vegetables we come across and try different ways of cooking them. Not that different, actually, as we only have two gas rings, a big saucepan, and little one and a frying pan. We can always get onions, garlic and potatoes and dried goods, like rice, lentils, kidney beans. When available in the local shops or from Dennise’s stall, we buy plantain, yam, dasheen, breadfruit, sweet potato, callaloo, christophene, funny long, thin green beans, peppers, very hot scotch bonnet peppers and succulent fresh ginger. Fresh tomatoes are expensive and the tinned ones are about £1.50 a can! We also sometimes get avocados, ridge cucumbers and lettuce. Pigeon peas are a staple here, but seem not to be in season at the mo. They grow on little trees which smell fragrant on the breeze. They are sold fresh in pods or dried in bags.

As far as supermarkets go, forget everything you know about shops in Europe. The one we use mostly in Tyrrel Bay is a sort of dark shed with rickety shelves. There are often big gaps on the shelves, or a lot of one thing arranged in more than one place. Most dry goods are still bought in bulk here and weighed up into plastic bags. There is nothing to tell you what’s in the bag, or how much it weighs. Just a price written on in felt-tip pen. Certainly there is no list of ingredients, recommended daily dose or warnings about nut allergies.

We did, actually eat out last night, though. It was a spur of the moment thing. We’d been for our swim. We extended the length of that again. I’m finding it easier and easier as my muscles remember what to do and I tend to get ahead of Andy. So I’ve been giving him the benefit of my professional swimming teacher’s knowledge and giving him pointers to improve his breast-stroke. (No smutty jokes, please.) This has had the effect of slowing him down quite a lot and, instead of waiting for him to catch up, I just carry on to see how far ahead of him I can finish. He regained his manly dignity though, by beating me afterwards when we took two of the Optimists for a spin round the Bay. After that I smelled the barbecue chicken going on in the Old Rum Shop, and I decided it was time I had a meaty treat. It was delicious. It had some sticky kind of sauce stuck to it by the time it came to me on a plate, with rice and vegetables and coleslaw. Andy said that’ll be the creole sauce. He had just the rice and veg, along with two eighths of Jack Iron rum and two bottles of coke to dilute it. (It’s 90% alcohol.) I had to lead him home after that. He seems fine this morning.

I’ll save the story of how I stole a bath mat and got caught for another time........

18 days now.

I can't believe it's a week since I last blogged. I haven't got time now: got to go and meet Andy for a swim. He's been doing a fibre glass repair on one of the Optimists. Something or other breaks every Saturday. I've been making my nth batch of lemonade and trying to speak to daughter no. 3 over a very wobbly internet connection. We have extended the length of our swim a couple of times and I think we may make it a little bit longer again today. I'll write and tell you more later on. The sea is calling.

Day 11.

We’re beginning to settle into our new house. We gave Joy, our landlord, a list of all the things the house needed for us to be able to stay here. He is slowly providing them and, in desperation, we have provided a few for ourselves – a saucepan, a sieve and some glasses. When he says he’s coming to do something we wait and he doesn’t show up, so we go out and when we return we find something left for us. The first time it was a curtain. Two days later he came and put up some of that stretchy curtain wire and put up the curtain. Several days later, two more curtains appeared. He still hasn’t put them up, although he said he’d come today. When we were out buying veg from the lady who has a stall in Tyrrel Bay, he came and left us a mirror. Up to now Andy has been guessing to shave and I think it’s just as well that I can’t see my hair, as it’s growing apace and is often thick with salt and sweat. Nice! I’m going to have to get Andy to cut it – gulp! – or maybe I’ll just let it grow long again.

Joy also told us that the electrician was coming today because the hot water for the shower has stopped working. The other taps are only cold anyway. We can just as easily shower in cold water because, once the top of your head has gone a bit numb, it isn’t very cold. Also, when the electric heater for the shower was working, it didn’t actually get very hot. When I was in there the other day it suddenly smelled of burning plastic and stopped working. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, as everything here works sporadically, if at all. We have had a couple of power cuts since we’ve been here. The whole of Tyrrel Bay was out last night, but had come on again by the time I’d found the candle and matches. One advantage is that you can see the fireflies in the trees below our balcony better when the lights are off. We also see humming birds down there. They are tiny and black and hover in a most delightful way. The other day there was a big bright green iguana down in the garden with our landlord’s sheep. We also see frigate birds soaring over the bay and pelicans diving for fish.

When we’re not looking at wildlife, we’re looking at yachts, fishing boats and freight-carriers coming in and out of the bay. Although we’ve been swimming every day, we haven’t been for a snorkel as yet. When we’ve come here for two weeks' holiday, we have to go all out to make the most of our time here. Because we’re here for five months, we’re taking it a little more easily. At least now we are. At first we had to push ourselves a little in order to find a house to rent, then move our stuff in. We’ve also had to trawl through Hillsborough for saucepans and other useful items. It’s incredibly hard to get hold of stuff here. There just isn’t very much to be had, even if you had a bottomless purse. We managed to find one small saucepan which, by European standards you’d think very cheap and nasty. It wasn’t particularly cheap, but it is shoddy, like most things here.

So we’re beginning to slow ourselves down to Caribbean time and wait patiently for things to happen. Maybe we’ll get our curtains up this week.

As far as getting involved with local life, though, we went along and helped Ted with the Tyrrel Bay Junior Yacht Club. [There is a short film of this in action on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekf3T-hde8Y ] Ted has about six or seven Optimist dinghies in varying states of repair, in which he teaches local kids to sail. It meant, with Andy and I on the beach supervising the slightly bigger ones in a race round various boats at anchor, Ted was able to take out a couple of the little ones. Our main aim, at the moment, is to get the two GP14s, which Ted acquired, repaired and seaworthy, for two reasons: 1) So we get the use of one of them when we want – hopefully we might even learn to sail properly ourselves. 2) So Ted can use a bigger dinghy to teach the little ones in. We can also become more useful in teaching once we’ve got more of the hang of these dinghies. It’s very different from sailing a 30’ cruiser.

You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is just to get anything of this kind done. For a start we have no tools or anything much with us. We’ve spent about five days now just looking at stuff lying around at the roadsides because we need something to prop the boat up so that we can work on it. Nothing of any use gets thrown away here. We can’t even find a beer crate – they are all in use for propping up fishing boats on the beach. We think we may have located some lengths of wood that I’m trying to convince Andy don’t belong to anyone. We may have to ‘borrow’ them under cover of darkness. However, we don’t want to get Ted accused of stealing someone’s bits of wood. He has enough on his plate with his wife living with another man.....

....Don’t get me started on the scandal and gossip we’ve started to collect......think of any small village in England (particularly one on a small island*), then multiply it by ten. Maybe the climate has something to do with it.

*[My Isle of Wight friends know what I mean.]

Day 3. It ain’t half hot.

Tuesday 25th November 08

We arrived in Carriacou on Saturday and checked into Scraper’s. He has a restaurant, bar and shop and 4 self contained units just across the road from the beach at Tyrrel Bay. I don’t know why he’s called Scraper. We’ve noticed that many of the locals have names that we assume were not the handles endowed on them at birth by the doting parents, but maybe acquired at school and stuck into adulthood and beyond. There’s Bubbles, who drives a taxi and rents out a house, Nark, Slinger the guitarist, Baba and many more. We’ve been coming across these people in the course of our enquiries, as our mission at the moment is to find somewhere cheap to rent for the next five months, so we’ve been asking everyone. David Augustine, who runs the Laqua Supermarket, the Twilight Bar and rents a house or two, showed us a little wooden place very close to the beach at the quiet end of Tyrrel Bay, but it is very small. Pokey would be the most accurate description. We saw a very dark apartment which was right on Paradise Beach (50 points in its favour) but the landlady lives upstairs and has about five dogs and a couple of cats (100 points against). The gloom and the resident cockroach also didn’t make us leap at it. Joseph at the Hardwood Snacket surprised us by showing us two lovely apartments with a fantastic view over to Union Island, but they were slightly more expensive and a little out of the way. We don’t want to be too isolated as we want to get to know people and get involved with local life. We’ve seen a nice little house just up the road from the beach at Tyrrel Bay which has been fixed up since the last hurricane (Ivan in 2004) and we’re waiting to hear what the rent is for that. Also, the guy next door who looks after the place for the landlady who is in England, was unable to unlock the door! We should find out this evening, so have decided not to make any more enquiries today, but have awarded ourselves a day off.

There has been a lot of rain here during November and we have been woken in the night a few times by some giant emptying a humungous bucket of water over the roof for about ten minutes. The result is a far greater humidity than anything we’ve experienced here before. So we’ve been sweating profusely and not actually cooling down. It was a little debilitating to start with, but I think I’m beginning to acclimatise. It should get drier from now on, anyway. The cloud formations have been dramatic – towering, boiling cumulus.

I wish I could put the sounds and smells of this place into the blog to share it with you. As I sit in my kitchen writing this I can hear a woman singing at the top of her voice somewhere down the road....I’ve just stepped out for a looksee and it’s Scraper’s wife sweeping the path singing what sounds like a traditional African song. She sounds happy in her work.

It wasn’t just the rain keeping us awake last night, as next door at Tanty Liz’s were having a big funeral party. When we arrived on Saturday they were chopping up meat on a table outside with big machetes. We saw them making preparations all weekend as more and more people arrived to stay. The preparations stepped up on Monday morning then they all disappeared to the church dressed in sombre finery. I say sombre because they were mainly in black and white, but still the ladies wore fancy hats and all the gold jewellery they could muster. By early evening they were all back next door, spilling out across the road, with plates of food and drinks, and we could hear the conversation getting louder and louder. Then the drumming started. I don’t know how many guys were on the big hand drums, but the rhythms were complicated and loud. If it had been any other kind of party I would have gone out for a gawp, but in respect for the dead person, we kept out of the way. So I don’t know if people were dancing or not. It went on until nearly midnight, though. It made my Mum’s funeral seem rather restrained in comparison. I do know that she would have risen up and given me what for if we’d had African drumming at her send off.

Andy already has project to start. He is going to be working with Ted (English guy) to get a GP14 (sailing dinghy) seaworthy. Ted has some Optimists (little dinghies) as well and teaches the local kids sailing on Saturday mornings. I’m hoping to get involved with helping to teach them to swim, too. Once Andy and Ted have done some fibreglass repair work and got the boat rigged, we will have the use of it, which should be fun.

As the day is getting warmer, I’m going to put away this steaming laptop and go for my daily long, lazy swim in the bay.

Wednesday 26th November 08

We moved into a lovely house with a stunning view over the bay (photos to follow). We think we will enjoy it more once the electricity and water start working! We waited in all afternoon for Grenlec to come and sort it. Looks like there was a small fire in the thing outside the house where the wires join. We have tank full of water but it comes into the house via an electric pump. We have some candles and a bucket of water at the ready and have come out for a pizza.

We also have two lovely kids to dote on living under the house.

Yes, real kids. Their mother is a goat.

Winter in England.

Hope you like the new look blog. I think it’s easier to read.

Isn’t the weather s*it? Best to get out of here asap. Funnily enough, we have got our tickets now. We’ll be flying out to the sun on 21^st November, after Cherry’s graduation ceremony.

We have new tenant moving into this house just after we leave.

Nothing much else to tell you at the mo, but I will be resuming my regular blog jottings from a secret location in the Caribbean. Hope you will join me. I’ll try to bring some sunshine into the drabness of winter.

On Dry Land

It's so boring living in a house! It keeps still, for one thing, and it's so quiet at night, with no water lapping and fishing boats going out at 5am. Can't wait to get back to it. First I have to put up with 5 months in the sun - that's if we can find flights we can afford now that XL have gone bust.

Well, we’ve been pretty busy since the funeral. The tenants left Andy’s house looking superficially ok, but we keep finding more stuff to clear up, clean, paint or get rid of. It’s quite satisfying, though, to get the house as nice as we can for the new tenants. We hope someone is going to take it at the end of November, but it’s not certain yet. So if any of you know anyone who wants a really nice Cotswold cottage with plenty of room for cat-swinging, a lovely conservatory with a view across the valley, super nice kitchen and bathroom, attractive inglenook fireplace fitted with an efficient wood-burner, and private garden, let us know.

Backtracking a bit, I left Andy in Spain all on his own for ten days, during which time he gave himself a crash course in Spanish, using the Michelle Thomas CD Rom set, and, with the heavy aid of a dictionary, managed to communicate with locals enough to buy a valve attachment for the bicycle pump, a new container of Camping Gas, and to get the boat safely hauled out of the water and parked on the land. He assures me he has done everything he had to do to put the boat safely to bed for the winter, all tucked up and everything. I withhold judgement until such time as I have returned to Ares and surveyed the scene.

Meantime, with visits planned to family in Kent, friends in Cornwall, more windows to clean on Andy’s house, more garden to hack back and burn, friends to see and annoy when we tell them how nice it is not going to work, long-lost daughter form NZ to hang out with, little granddaughter to visit until she howls, then leave her with distraught Mum, we’re finding we’ve got plenty to occupy us until Cherry’s Graduation ceremony, after which we intend to leave the country as fast as we can to get away from the failing banks, crashing property markets and businesses going bust.

Hasta luego.

Blogification - 26th September 08

I wrote this episode just before I had to fly back to England, so it never got posted on the blog. You can read it now.

26^th September 08

I’m getting bored now. I divide my time up between reading, doing crosswords and swatting flies. That’s when I’m not going shopping, cycling or going to the Biblioteca to use the wifi and the Skype phone. So far we’ve managed to find British yachtspersons with whom to swap the books we’ve read. It means we get a mixed lot of books to read – Andy’s now reading one by Lyn Andrews, described on the cover as Catherine Cookson of the north. But some of them have been very good.

We have tended to bump into the same people again along this Spanish coast. Yesterday we had drinks aboard a British boat with some people from the New Forest. They told us they’d sold three boats and bought two in the last few weeks! Their “proper” boat was in Lymington. The one we went on here was just their “knockabout”. It was twice the size of ours, with three bedrooms and two toilets. Still, we didn’t mind slumming it for a bit, just to be sociable. Then we had the cockney couple from the cat on our boat for drinks last night, but they’ve now gone south. It’s been really really windy since we’ve been here, and even if we’d been trying to go somewhere else, we wouldn’t have wanted to.

We’re now keen to find Paco to talk to. He’s the guy who’s going to haul the boat out for us, and we want to make sure he’s going to do it before we leave for England in ten days’ time. We fear he may want to leave it in until we’ve gone, then haul it out without us looking. We want to see it come out, be securely settled on land, and inspect her bottom, the prop, the seacocks, the rudder and the keel. We’re going to see if we can find him this evening and pin him down to a date. We may need to find Marco to act as translator. The problem is finding people at work. It’s no good going now because they’ll all be at “lunch” which last from about 1.30 to about 5.30. That’s the best time, we find, to go out and do anything, like cycling or going to the supermercado, because there’s no-one around and it’s quiet. The morning’s no good for us because we get up too late. The early evening to late evening is when the shops open again and everybody crawls outside dressed in their best clothes and goes for a walk. There is a kind of unspoken rule about the etiquette of the “paseo”. It’s a kind of power game as to who gives way to whom on the pavement. The smarter your clothes and the more bling you wear, the less likely you are to get out of the way of other strollers. We are always pitifully underdressed in shorts and tee-shirts and find elderly ladies in high heels with matching bags and sculpted hair walk straight at us knowing that we will step aside.

We’ve just realised it’s Friday, which means the boatyard guys seem to have knocked off early. That’s means we’ll have to try and catch him on Monday, now.

I like and admire the “mañana” mentality – until, that is, I want to get something done.

Sad News

Hi readers, I haven't been on here for a while because I've been coping with some personal sadness. I had to fly back to England last Sunday (28th September) because my mother was ill in hospital. Sadly, she died. It had been expected for a number of years and she was very frail and ill. I am glad that now she has been freed from her worn out body and all the cares and anxieties, depression and pain. She is now with Dad again after a ten year separation. This is the eulogy I have written to speak at her funeral this week.


PHYLLIS 1925 - 2008

83 years ago my Mum, with her twin sister, Betty, was born prematurely, weighing just 2lbs … a bag of sugar . The doctor told our Grandma to put the little mites in a drawer and not to get too attached as they wouldn’t last the night. Well they did last the night. Mum, in fact, lasted 30,267 days and nights. She was FULL of life. She was a tall, strong woman with a powerful character. She was vivacious and passionate and could be quite frightening at times. I can remember her flying down the kitchen with a hair brush in her hand ready to give us our due when we’d done something to make her cross. But she was a bit rubbish at aiming and I could usually dodge out of the way, and as quickly as it had arisen, her anger would abate and she’d give up and be sorry.
But she laughed more often than she was cross. She had a huge sense of fun and playfulness. She liked being a bit naughty. When we were little and still living in St Albans there was a local Bobby who used to call in for cups of tea, homemade cake, a chat and a laugh. He’d come in the front door, take his helmet off and put it by the phone, leaving his cape on the back of his bike which was propped up outside. Mum, in her daftness, thought it would be a great joke to steal something from a policeman, so she nipped out the backdoor, took his cape, and hid it, expecting him to go out and say “’Ullo, ‘ullo, ‘ullo, what’s been goin’ on ‘ere then?” Well, he drank his tea and off he went ……. After a few days Mum didn’t know what to do. She was really embarrassed and in the end she had to go to the police station and own up and give back the cape. Dad would have teased her mercilessly. I grew up thinking “Daft old woman” was a term of endearment …. which it was.
Mum ran the shop in Freshwater for 10 years and was really popular in the village because she was so cheery, laughing and joking with the customers. What people didn’t realise was that she would come in exhausted at the end of the day, take out her plate with the two false teeth on it and leave it somewhere around the house, then collapse in front of the TV with her feet in a bowl of Radox. If anyone knocked the door she’d get up, look round frantically, saying, “Where’s my tooth?” Once I put it in a mug of water in the deep freeze overnight. When she tried to pick it out of the mug on the windowsill in the morning it was in a solid block of ice. She wasn’t cross that time …. she laughed.
People were drawn to her generous nature. When I came back to live in Freshwater when Sarah was little she was ALWAYS, every day, entertaining friends at the big pine table in the kitchen with coffee, home baking, a chat and a laugh.
What were the best things she gave me?
There was so much fun, warmth and the freedom to go off and do things - riding bikes, horses, climbing the cliffs.
But there are three things I’ll mention in particular - all of which I’ve passed on to my own three daughters:
She took me to libraries from an early age and engendered a love of books and reading.
She took me swimming from an early age - although she didn’t share Dad’s love of boats and sailing, cos it made her seasick, but she loved being in the water and was a strong swimmer.
Thirdly, she took us to the Clark’s shop to get our feet measured and made us wear comfortable shoes.
Thank you, Mum, for everything.

Ría de Ares

21^st September 08

Well, I see I haven’t written a blog for about 11 days. So here goes.....

We were getting quite settled in Viveiro and making friends with other Brits on boats and with the port staff. One of them looked like Peter Sellers and had a similar enjoyment of a joke. He was particularly animated the day after the boss guy came in with his arm in a sling. Apparently he’d had a tankful the night before and crashed his car on his way home. I asked in Spanish if his arm was broken. I was told no, just cut and stitched. When I asked if his car was broken, Peter Sellers cracked up completely, while trying to hide his amusement from his boss.

We had more or less decided to pull the boat out there for the winter and spend three weeks having a holiday. There was a handy boat-hoist; the supermercados were close; there was a nice beach nearby; the showers, though basic, had plenty of hot water. We booked our flights home from La Coruña. The journey to the airport was going to be slightly cumbersome, however we discovered that the journey back from the airport to Viveiro would have been impossible without staying a night in a hotel, so we decided to carry on and get a bit closer to La Coruña. Also, with one of the hoist drivers having put off his operation to cure tunnel vision in order to cover for the one with his arm in a sling, we thought Sally might prefer to be lifted out elsewhere.

We left Viveiro in what we expected to be an Easterly force 4 to 5, but turned out not be much wind at all, so we ended up motor-sailing to the next Ría, which is Cedeira. That was such a lovely place to anchor overnight and it was free. It is a completely sheltered bit of water surrounded by wooded hills, rugged cliffs and golden beaches. We both think it was the nicest place we’ve been to on this trip. We had a brief foray ashore, before going to have drinks on a Cockney couple’s catamaran (nice bit of alliteration). The little town on the river was absolutely charming, with the main square having a lovely beach at one end. We would like to have stayed there for a few more days and explored, but heavy weather was forecast for the Friday. We needed to check out whether Ares would do for over-wintering the boat, because if not, we would have to find somewhere else; so we set off next morning round the north-west corner of Spain.

Again, there was less wind than forecast and again we motor-sailed. The coast-line here is rugged and beautiful. Unfortunately it is mostly shrouded in a hazy mist. We were visited by a pod of dolphins again, which played and raced around the boat for about 20 minutes. I sat on the foredeck and watched them while my Magnum photographer took pictures of the water where the dolphins had just been. It was a nice way of marking what may well be our last sail of the year.

We’ve done 906 miles since leaving Poole in June and about 3,000 miles altogether in Sally since we bought this boat 3 ½ years ago. Now we are going to leave Sally here in the Ría de Ares which is the next one along from El Ferrol and opposite to La Coruña. It is quite a small town (only one supermercado) and a bit of a backwater. The marina has been enlarged in recent years and has plenty of room. One advantage is that the guy who works in the office was brought up in London, speaks perfect English and is a willing translator when it comes to negotiating with the boatyard guy. He is also a very useful source of local information and says he can book us taxis and so on. I am managing to make myself understood in Spanish, but the locals all speak Gallegan (Galician Spanish which is a bit a mixture of Catalan and Portugese), so I’m finding it very difficult to understand them.

So far it has been quite warm here. In fact, yesterday was so hot we had to put up the sunshade over the cockpit. We also cycled round to one of the beaches for a refreshing swim. Although a bit cloudy today, it is still warm. I hear that the weather has improved in England, but I’m still not really looking forward to it. Here in September, it is like a hot June day in England, if any of you can remember what that feels like. I am, however, looking forward to catching up with my family and friends, then hopefully we will be heading off for more sun and adventures in Grenada, if we can find an affordable flight, seeing as XL have just ceased trading.

Now where did I stow my fleece?

I shall carry on blogging, though, so don't go away......

Viveiro 10.09.08

Well it feels like I haven’t written on the blog for quite some time. We left Ribadeo on Monday and found, as soon as we left the Ría, that there was very little wind and we motored to Viveiro.

The last week in Ribadeo had been their fiesta time. We walked up the hill to see a band one night with a couple off a boat from Scotland. They’re spending 3 years going round the world in a 44ft yacht, which makes ours look very small. They had two toilets! as well as everything else you could possibly imagine in the electronic gadgetry department and every other department. They didn’t like the band though, as they were expecting something more traditional and Spanish, not the long-haired hippies who looked straight out of the early 70’s with their version of Cream’s Strange Brew. So we went back to their boat to try all the different aged Scottish malt whiskies they’d brought along with them – at least Andy did; I stuck to the vino tinto out of the litre carton at 0.59€. Andy keeps telling me how much money we’re saving by being here. I’m a bit more concerned for our livers.

Other features of the fiesta were more bands of the traditional rock and roll style, fairground rides for children, lots of stalls, mainly manned by South Americans, selling all sorts of stuff no-one needs, and huge figures and people with oversize cartoon heads, dancing around to the music of bagpipes. Also, for the two nights of the weekend, when it was the fiesta of Santa Maria de Campo, I could hear Roman Catholic Church organ music, singing and chanting during the early hours of the morning wafting down from the Plaza Major. It’s no wonder they have to shut everything down for 3 or 4 hours in the middle of the day and take a siesta.

While there, we did a long cycle ride, taking in part of the pilgrimage route which joins the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. This is a tourist route goes from the Pyrenees all the way across northern Spain, to Santiago de Compostela, near La Coruña. It was good to cycle on tarmac lanes with no cars, up through the forests of eucalyptus (an import which seems to have taken over much of the hillside forestry of northern Spain), giving us marvellous views of the Ría.

So we arrived safely in Viveiro, which is quite a way up this Ría and very sheltered from the Atlantic swell. There is an interesting historic old walled town here, completely hidden behind the miles of new apartment blocks. It has old stone gateways and narrow lanes, opening out into the Plazas. We came across an almost exact replica of Lourdes by one of the many old churches. People who wish some ailment or problem to be cured, buy a small plastic limb, or head, or cow, depending on their affliction, and hang it on the wall beneath the effigy of the Virgin Mary. You can also light a votive candle by putting a coin in a slot, and a pretend candle lights up with an electric flickering bulb. It was an insight into the Catholic faith which will stay with me.

I am still adjusting to this life. It sounds from this Blog as if all is sweetness and light, however there is a dark side. I’ve been quite depressed at times from being a perpetual tourist. We’re just passing through and nobody knows us, and we know nobody. I grew up in a holiday place and know what we locals thought about what we called grockles or rubber-necks. We occasionally make contact with other people on boats, then we part and never see them again. Quite often I’m very pleased not to meet them again, as many seasoned yachties seem to be tradition-bound, closed-minded, pedantic bigots, who are only too willing to put us right and tell us how everything they know and do is right and how crap everything else is. Those are just the nice ones! No. I am exaggerating there. We’ve met some very nice people too, but, as I say, they sail onto the next place. The other thing I’m finding difficult is not having enough to do. Well, we always have stuff to do, but it’s the sort of stuff you do on holiday. Everywhere we go we do the same stuff. Find the supermarkets, get a map from the Tourist Information or from the Oficina de Puerto, and explore. We hardly even scratch the surface, though, and we never understand why what’s going on is going on, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I shall wait and see how my attitude changes as we go along. Perhaps I’m expecting too much. I realise that the world has changed. There’s no such thing as a traveller any more, only tourists. Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep positive for Andy’s sake. I suspect it’s me that’s driving him to drink.

We’re now seeking out in earnest somewhere to keep the boat for the winter. We’ve booked flights home from La Coruña now. Viveiro is a possibility, but the journey to the airport is a bit of a faff, so we’re planning to go round the corner into the Ría de Ares to see what that’s like.

The good news is that we went for a swim at the beach yesterday, and the water, although not warm, didn’t actually take your breath away and leave us shivering. It wasn’t bad at all.

Ribadeo

It’s raining. It’s been raining all day and the forecast is for rain tonight, rain tomorrow, rain the next day, and the day after that. So it’s true that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain – if the plain is the strip of land between the coast and the mountains where shines a vibrant green, on the days that it isn’t overcast in mist and cloud, that is.

Ribadeo is quite a nice town. A bit bigger than Stroud, maybe, and quite run down around the edges. We noticed in Luarca and here that there are a lot of properties for sale and to rent and shops with closing down sales. The credit crunch seems to be biting here as well as in France and Old Blighty. Most of the building work and growth here is the municipal stuff, funded by EU money: new roads, council buildings, marinas, etc. There are quite a few new marinas along this coast line, but very few yachts to fill them. We like the emptiness of the seas and the laid back feel of the marinas. The few British yachts we meet are long distance - either on their way to the Caribbean or on their way back from Turkey. It’s so very different from the French marinas, where boats were coming in and out every day and the staff packed them in like sardines.

This marina is the most restless place we’ve stayed. There are strange currents flowing down the Ria which stir the boats about on their pontoons. One of our mooring lines frayed right through on our first night. We’ve had to keep tightening the ropes, protecting them with plastic tubing and adding more. We also get the sound of fenders squeaking against the sides all night, which doesn’t aid restful sleep. When we get a favourable wind, we’ll be off to Viviero. At the moment it’s all westerly and wet.

We’re now looking along this coast for somewhere to lay-up the boat for the winter so we can return to UK for a visit, before, hopefully, flying off somewhere hot for the winter. We’ve just heard that Andy’s tenants are moving out at the end of September, so if any of you know of someone looking for a beautiful house to rent, let us know. Also, it may mean we can camp out there on our return. If any of you happen to have a spare car, we’d like to borrow it for November, please.

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening...

“Isn’t it lovely sailing in shorts and teeshirts!” I said to Andy, as we surged along the coast with an easterly wind on our quarter, bathed in sunshine. We left Gijón to enjoy its Fiesta de Sidra* without us, and headed for Luarca, about 40 miles away.
*(Festival of getting completely rat-arsed on local cider, which is poured from a great height into the glass, preferably without looking, in order to make it “fizzy”.)
Two hours later: I watched as spectacular forks of lightning struck where I thought the mountains were, because they had disappeared into mist, and counted the seconds as I listened for the thunder. I began to apply the water- and wind-proof sailing gear. Andy put on his hoody. “That’s not going to do you much good in an aguacero tormentoso,” I said. “What?” he said. “A heavy downpour with thunder. I can see it raining over there.” The forecast had mentioned a possibility of the thundery downpours, but we had been enjoying such lovely settled weather, that we didn’t really take much notice.
We carried on watching the lightning and listening to the rolling thunder as it got nearer. There was just our little boat with its great big tall metal stick surrounded by not very tall sea, with lightning all around us. The skies opened and the rain drops were so big and so numerous that they flattened the waves. We took shelter huddled under the spray-hood.
Andy: “I wonder what you’re supposed to do if your boat gets struck by lightning?”
Liz: “I don’t know. No-one said anything about it on any of the courses we’ve done.”
Andy: “If we survived it, we could just put our fingers in our ears and go la, la, la.”
Liz: “I think we could just panic.”
Andy: “I don’t think that would be very helpful.”
Liz: “Oh, unlike your suggestion, then.”
We thought it prudent to make frequent fixes of position on the chart, in case our instruments got affected. We have known our depth gauge to go haywire under electric storm conditions. But with the coast line we were approaching only a couple of miles away, and us still unable to see it, we thought we might be a bit stuffed if the GPS failed at that point.
As we approached the harbour, the details became more visible through the gloom and, needless to say, we got safely into Luarca. We’re beginning to see why this coastline is so verdant, as we’ve been kept awake by more thunderstorms, but they paled into insignificance in comparison to the heavy metal festival which was playing on the quay last night, including bands like, “Legacy of Brutality” and “Negra Sombra”. We actually did manage to sleep through a lot of it, helped by the fact that the stage was facing away from our boat and about 250yards away.
Luarca is a quaint and unspoiled little town with a thriving fishing harbour. It is built on the sides of a steep gorge with a river running through it. It’s like Chalford by the sea, with derelict little stone cottages with stone tiled roofs with bushes growing out of them and lots of steep steps. There is provision for a few yachts to moor (for free!) but we’ve only seen two others and been on our own here most of the time. It’s so different from the overcrowded marinas we’ve left behind in France. It seems quite old-fashioned here and they don’t seem to have heard of wifi. There is, however, one internet café which we’re going to try this evening and see if we can post this blog and, more importantly, get some weather forecast, otherwise we’re stuck here forever and ever. We don’t seem to be receiving anything on the Navtec or on the VHF here. There is an Oficina de Puerto, but so far the door has always been locked and there is no forecast pinned up. I don’t know how the fishermen manage. The lady in the Tourismo told us that the Cruz Rojo de la Mer (the Red Cross who seem to run the lifeboats) get a weather forecast, but when we asked them yesterday, they only had one for the day before.
We plan to go on to Ribadeo next.

Las Bicicletas nuevas

Yay! Check out the shiny red bikes.

Viva España!

We made it! 58 hours across Biscay, living on dry bread, plain boiled potatoes and sips of water. Only the first 48 were the worst, where I spent most of the time lying down with my eyes shut pretending I was somewhere else, devising adverts for the sale of the b*****d boat, while my stomach turned itself inside out. I did have to make myself take some watches, because I knew if Andy didn’t get some rest, things could all go horribly wrong. As it was, we picked up a huge bit of fishing net on our propeller as we were motoring into the south-westerly which was supposed to be a nice westerly. Luckily it was daylight and not too rough and that Andy had just come up from a rest (I’d just been sick over the side) and he stopped the engine very quickly when he heard it go clunk. We drifted 150 miles from the nearest land with about 3 miles to the bottom underneath us and Andy inflated the dinghy to inspect the damage. He squeezed into the wetsuit and snorkelling gear and had to dive under the boat with a sharp knife and cut us free. After about an hour and a half we were ready to continue. That was on the second day. The wind veered and increased. We stuck the sails out and were doing about 7 knots. The third day, I rose again. The sun shone. Less than 99 miles to go. About 30 miles from the Gijon we saw a whale about two boat lengths away from us, blowing. I think they feed along the edge of the continental shelf. Shortly after that we were able to make out land and the Picos de Europas mountains loomed out of cloud. We sailed into Gijon about 6pm in the sunshine. The coast is green with cliffs and river inlets interspersed with sandy beaches. We were in Spain. I never want to do that again – well next time, I’m going to take the Stugeron before I start, and keep taking it all the way.
Gijon
The largest city in Asturias. I don’t like cities. But Gijon is different. It’s spacious, clean, quiet and happy. It has two beautiful beaches. Some beautiful old buildings still remain, although it was mainly destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and has been rebuilt as a modern and very attractive city. It has trees, parks, sculptures, bike hire stands, where you put a card in a slot and ride off. The marina is very big and, compared to France, practically empty. It costs about two thirds of the French prices, as does the food.
As we got further south in France the British yachts became fewer, and what there were, were mainly retired people having a few weeks cruising in boats that were kept permanently moored in France. Here, the few British boats there are tend to be those of people with a larger agenda. There are a couple with two little girls (aged 2 and 4) heading for the Caribbean; a couple on their way back from the Azores and Back race who got stuck in Coruña and were trying to get back to England – they’ve just decided they like Gijon so much they’re going to leave the boat here and fly back; and a Dutch couple with two children who are also off to the Caribbean. They are proper boats, solid with long keels, fit for the oceans. Those modern fast, wide boats, fitted with televisions don’t cross Biscay. We’re with the big boys now.
Tomorrow we’re going to try the hire bikes in search of new folders, before make plans to set off westwards along this fascinating coastline.
PS The Spanish language I’ve been waiting to practice is all coming out in French now. C’est la vie! See what I mean!

Off to Spain

Looks like we have our window for Biscay. I can't find any more excuses not to go, so it looks like we'll be leaving tomorrow morning - Wed - should arrive Gijon on Friday.

Watch this space.....

Sorry

Sorry, folks, for the last two rants. Please don't stop reading. I like to know there's someone there that I can talk to.

Things were getting just too much for a while, but I'm getting over it and getting things back into proportion. I think I'm getting over mourning for my bike, too.

I can't promise no more rants, though, as there are so many things that happen in this crazy world which deserve to be ranted at. Not that it does any good.

We are still stuck in France, but it looks like there'll be a weather window this week (Wed - Fri) for us to get across Biscay to Gijon.

We had become resigned to not going there at all, and taking the canals, but that was proving problematic. We have to take a test and get a certificate which we should have done in England, except that we weren't panning on going that way. Also, there are other regulations which we're not sure if we comply to. If we can't cross Biscay and can't get through the canals, then we'll most likely have to turn round and bring the boat back to England.

We've worked out that we've spent, so far, about twice what we were expecting. This is mainly becuse we've been in France for twice as long as we were expecting and been forced to stay in expensive marinas in order to get internet access and long-range weather forecasts. The other reason is that the exchange rate is very unfavourable.

If we can get to northern Spain, our expenses will be much lower.

So, it's either Spain by the weekend, a month getting through the canals and then finding ourselves in the Med, or back home.

I'll let you know.

It's a Dog's Life - Another Rant

Well that was exciting – just had a visit from three young men in uniform with Douane written on their chests. They just wanted to know where we'd come from, where we were going, had we anything to declare and to check our ships papers and passports. They've gone away now. I thought they were going to take the boat apart searching for drugs or illegal immigrants or whatever else they may have been looking for – potatoes or salt, I expect. I managed to get into the conversation about our bikes being nicked, mainly so that I could paint us as the innocent victims.

Well, we're still here, in L'Herbaudière. Yes. A week here now and still no weather window for Spain. After three days of howling winds and rain, pinning us onto the pontoon, squashed by the boat rafted up to us, squeaking fenders all night, it is now hot and sunny. We thought we were going to go yesterday or today, but there is more shit coming at us from across the Atlantic, expected tomorrow and Monday. We're hoping a window might open up next week, if the high pressure out there decides to sit on the Azores and push the lows up over England. Meantime we wait and see. Tomorrow we shall take the free bus, yet again, - the lady driver is quite friendly to us now, even though we haven't got a clue what she's chatting about. We just smile back – to walk to the SuperU where we can get the Wifi for €3 per hour. It's so noisy in there that it's impossible to use the Skype phone. The Port said it would have Wifi on 15^th August – yes, that's today, but when I asked yesterday they said it was coming at the end of August now.

It's pretty annoying being here with no bikes, though. We've walked all the walks. We're thinking of trying a swim this afternoon, when the tide's come up a bit and hopefully warmed up the water on the beach. At low tide there are miles and miles of wet sand (and seaweed) which is utilised by land-yachts. We've been trying to get new bikes, but it's very difficult to speak in French on a phone, because they gabble back and don't understand that I don't understand, if you understand what I mean. The bike shop in Noirmoutier did have a go at ordering some for us but told us it was impossible. So we continue to wait, bikeless.

I'm keen to get to Spain. I've been revising from my Spanish language text books. I've just started reading Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to get in the mood. And maybe we'll be able to buy bikes in Spain. I also hope that they don't have as many dogs in Spain as they do in France. What is it with the French and their dogs? I thought Britain was supposed to be the land where we treat our pets better than our children. Here nearly everyone has at least one dog. They take them in shops, restaurants and bars; they carry them in bags, give them rides in bicycle baskets, and even have special bicycle trailers for the dog to sit it! I've never seen so many dogs being dragged, against their will, onto boats. Huge men with shaved heads and tattoos have little lap dogs on leads. It's impossible to walk along the pavement without getting tangled in one of those stupid leads that extend and allow beloved pooch to get in front of legs, bikes and (hopefully) cars. The amount of merde on the pavements also reflects the French love of their favourite pets.

If we haven't found a weather window in the next week or two, we're going to have to take the canals. That's not as easy as it sounds. We'd have to get the mast taken down, and the boom, even our radar and wind turbine are too high, we think, for some of the bridges. We'd have to find a way of taking the exam so that we can get our international certificate of competence for the inland waterways. There are 120 locks between Bordeaux and the Med. At least we wouldn't have to worry about the weather, though.

So we wait.

Grand Theft Vélo - L'Herbaudiere 12th Aug 08

....and it was all going so well....

There's a lot to tell you, so I'll start with the good stuff. Saturday we got our bikes out and had a good old explore of this very interesting island. It is joined to what we would call the mainland, but the French call the continent by (a) a bridge and (b) a causeway which is a road for cars only at low tide. They sell a funny postcard in the tourist shops showing a car under water as the tide has come in. Not so funny to us in England who remember the flooding last summer. Anyway, the main economic activities here (apart from tourism) are growing potatoes – famous Ile de Noirmoutier pommes de terres which are sold in little fancy packages to tourists, mussels, oysters and salt. There are vast areas of salt pans on the marshes and people gather salt, as the water evaporates in the sun, and sell it, you've guessed it, wrapped in fancy packages to tourists. It is a completely flat island made of sand and the main mode of transport (apart from the constant jams of tourists in cars) is tourists on bikes. There are about three million bikes (I counted) on this island and a marvellous grid of cycle tracks and roads to get around on, away from the cars.

So why did you pick on our bikes to nick, you bastard, whoever you are out there, I hope your thieving fingers rot, painfully and slowly.

That was Sunday morning, as Andy set off to buy pains au chocolats for our breakfast, then came back to tell me our bikes had been stolen from where they were locked to the bike rack at the end of the pontoon. That was when our world fell apart. With no transport, we couldn't get to the town of Noirmoutier, which is where we have to go to get internet access and weather forecasts, so that we can get out of this place.

We went to the Bureau du Port and told them and got them to phone the police for us. At this point, there was a screaming of sirens, flashing of blue lights, the exits to the Island were sealed, scene of crime officers descended with finger-printing kit, nets, guns and prison wagons. No, there wasn't. We were told to go to Noirmoutier to report it to the Gendarmerie, but not to go until the afternoon, as they were busy. But how do we get there? There is a free bus. Wow. Yes, in July and August there is a free bus about 5 times a day to and from Noirmoutier.

The bus dropped us near the centre of the town and we had to walk about a mile to find where the bold Gendarmes hide behind a big barred fence and locked gates. There seemed to be no way in, until I walked past the sign saying no entry apart from military personnel, through the car park and up the steps. A very suspicious officer opened the door to us babbling about how we were meant to use the phone outside to get in. Je ne comprends pas in an English accent soon shut him up. He let us in and we managed to explain about our bikes. He got us a form to fill in and gave us a case no. so we can claim on the insurance. Oh, by the way, you'd better go to the Municipal Police to see if they've found your bikes. While we were there a couple were admitted, after waiting at the gate a long time, with bleeding hands, ranting on about something and being hit on the head, and the bold gendarmes, with true sang froid, told them to go away. How I wish I could understand this stupid language.

The Municipal Police Station was completely hidden behind the Mairie, down an alleyway, round the corner, with a sign about three inches across announcing we'd finally found the right place, after searching for half an hour, then asking at the Tourist Info office, and a woman officer took down details of the bikes on a post-it, which she'd probably binned before we were back out of the alley. Anyway, there seemed little danger of any of them actually solving any crime, but at least they were safe.

Now don't even get me started on the Restaurant....

Oh, all right then.... we'd gone up there on Saturday evening lured by the promise of the vegetarian set meal for €20. Madame told us the restaurant was full but would we like to make a reservation for the next day, Sunday? Yes, we would.

Sunday, we walked, bikeless, to the restaurant and were shown to our table. It was all rather bizarre. There was a huge stuffed caterpillar against the wall, which may have been art. Not sure. The waitress had very little English and spoke so quietly that we couldn't hear her, anyway. She brought a huge menu, the size of a photo-album, made of that lumpy home-made paper you get in gift shops. As I flicked through (and she only gave one to me, not to Andy, whom she never addressed at all) could see all sorts of stuff in French, but nothing about what food or drink they had on offer. She turned it to the wine page and said something about it starts here. I looked at the wines (Andy normally chooses the second cheapest) and then handed it to him to choose. We chose a rosé. She went off, with the menu.

She brought the wine. We drank some. She then brought a plate with some little melon balls and a little pot of mushed up beetroot to dip them in with a cocktail stick. Okay, we did that. When she came to serve the people at the next table, I said I would like to read the menu. We'd not ordered any food yet, and were hungry. She said something I couldn't hear and the man on the next table said he'd explain. Apparently, on Sunday evenings there's a set menu for €22 when the chef uses up all his left overs in the fridge so you don't know what you're going to get. Oh, we said. That explained some of it. “Nous sommes végétariens”. She went away. We waited for some time. The other tables got brought an entrée in a glass with some salad and a bread roll. Eventually the chef came in with two plates which he proudly set in front of us. There were two very small pieces of fish arranged on some haricots verts with spring onion tops. Andy said, “Je suis végétarien.” No problem, said the chef in his little hippy African-type hat, and took his plate away. I ate mine. It didn't take long. Then the chef brought Andy a plate of fried potatoes on some green vegetables. Then the waitress brought us both a small bread roll. I'd already finished my fish, so ate the bread while Andy ate his, what we thought was an entrée. Then we waited a long time. The other tables had plates of hot stuff brought to them and they ate up. Then the waitress brought us a spoon and fork, and we wondered what kind of main dish it was going to be. You never know with this nouvelle cuisine lark. After a while the waitress brought us a desert. I was gobsmacked. Partly because I didn't want one. I wanted my dinner. Partly because it had a cooked banana lurking in one corner (which looked to me like merde de chien) and something in a little tiny glass. A half a strawberry in another corner and a tiny drizzle of what looked like kiwi juice. Oh, and the mint leaf, of course. I ate half of the stuff in the glass, but the spoon was too big to get the rest out. I knew Andy would be embarrassed if I stuck my finger in, like I would at home, so I didn't. Then we waited some more. We were hoping for some cheese, or a coffee, perhaps. Nothing happened. I tried and tried in vain to catch the eye of the waitress or the proprietress. People were leaving, all happy and smiling and fed. In the end we went. The bill was €70. I was fuming all the way back to the boat, where I filled up with bread and cheese. Today, I spent two hours with my dictionary penning a letter to the restaurant proprietors about how I felt disappointed, angry, robbed and hungry. Why didn't the stupid woman tell us what happened on Sundays when she took our booking? We would have booked for another night where we could choose the vegetarian option for less money.

That's done it for us, now. We're never eating out again. We had a veggie pizza on Belle Isle where we'd both woken up parched in the middle of the night because of the amount of salt that must have been in it. In Britain there is a huge variety of foods you can eat out: Indian, Chinese, Thai, Italian, French, English, African, McDonalds, fish and chips. In France every restaurant has the same food, every crèperie has the same menu, every brasserie, bistro, whatever, has the same menu. The only thing they ever have which isn't fish or meat is a warm goat's cheese salad as an entrée. The French pride themselves on their food. Well, there are more tastes in heaven and earth, M'sieur, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You try and find lime pickle or cumin seed in a French supermarket. They don't have it. And another thing, while I'm on a rant, why don't they sell choppped tinned tomatoes. Plenty of tinned tomatoes, not chopped. You have to chop them in the tin, the juice runs down the side and makes a mess. Don't they know we've had them chopped for the last 20 years or so.

Sorry about this, but having our bikes stolen has certainly coloured our vision, to say the least.

My life now consists of getting the bus to town, trying to claim the insurance for our bikes, trying to source new bikes, which is proving impossible and waiting for this infernal wind to die down. Today we rescued a traditional wooden boat in the marina which had broken free of its moorings and was blowing towards us, menacingly. When the guy who works in the marina came to help, he didn't tie the motor launch up properly and it drifted away. Perhaps there's a future permanent career for him in the police force.

Blog - Saturday 9th August – L’Herbaudière, L’Ile de Noirmoutier.

Well, we’re still in France! We thought we were going to Spain on Wednesday, although it was looking like Thursday was going to be a bit blowy, but on Wednesday morning the forecast was worse (Force 7, gusting to 8), so instead we had a change of plan. We thought we’d keep going a bit further south so that we only had to find a two-day weather window to cross to northern Spain, instead of a three-day one. We said goodbye to Port-Louis and sailed to Belle Ile, which is aptly named. It was lovely. We saw some dolphins on the way but they didn’t hang around. Thursday was indeed very blowy and we were getting the full benefit of the Atlantic swell at our anchor, so we moved into the harbour on Thursday night, which meant waking up the boat next door very early on Friday morning and doing complicated things with ropes, in order to get out and put in a full day’s sailing, as the next port was about 45 miles away.

We had a cracking sail all the way to Noirmoutier in less than 9 hours which was marked by a pod of dolphins swimming along with us, under the boat, in front of it, leaping out beside us, for about twenty minutes. A marvellous and heart-warming sight and such an honour. It was a bit rolly with a following wind and the swell from behind. With our old-fashioned long keel, we were able to keep our course while surfing down the waves. We saw other boats wallowing quite a bit more than we were in the swell, particularly when we got closer to Noirmoutier, where the sea is shallower and the swell was breaking.


So it all went swimmingly until we got into the harbour and the girl in the Service du Port boat gabbled something at me in French which I didn’t understand at all. She then indicated for us to follow her, so we did, right down the harbour, which was absolutely packed with boats rafted up along the hammerheads at the ends of the pontoons. She was pointing and Andy, scrabbling around with ropes, was saying, There, next to the motorboat. Well, there were about two hundred motorboats to choose from and I had no idea where I was meant to be stopping the boat. It became apparent when I saw the harbour wall in front of me and the depth gauge started flashing frantic signals at me, that I was supposed to have stopped at the motor boat which I had just passed. Now, as I said, it was packed in there. There was no room to turn our boat round, so I was forced to try reverse. Now, if any of you have ever tried to reverse in a long-keeled boat, you will know the problem I had. If you haven’t, then take it from me, it’s impossible. As the water you are pushing away doesn’t flow over the rudder, you have no way of steering. The boat goes backwards, but in whatever direction it chooses. It decided to turn itself round to port on this occasion and was stopped when we crunched into a little motorboat rafted up on the opposite hammerhead. Oh, dear. People came out of their cabins to help, smirk, or just protect their own boats. My first thought was, Oh my god, it’s going to be nightmare of paperwork sorting out the insurance. By this time, we had managed to get ropes over to the motorboat on the other side and we were able to park, facing the other way. (At least we’re now facing the right way to get out of here!)

I sat down shakily with a beer, once we were firmly attached to the pontoon, and tried not to look at the blue paint on the motorboat the other side of the fairway. When the harbour girl came back, I called her over and managed, in French, to admit, Nous avons frappé cette bateau, while pointing at the incriminating Sally-coloured paint on the other boat. She went over and washed off the blue smear and gabbled something else at me. It seemed that she thought there was no damage, even though I’d heard a horrible crunch as our inch-thick GRP with teak rail had dented in their ¼ inch-thick shiny white plastic. We even went to the Capitainerie du Port and told them what we’d done. He said there was no damage. So, it looks like we got away with that one.

The pilot book said this place was an unspoilt, old-fashioned mix of yachts and fishing boats. Maybe the authors were here some time ago, but now it is a big marina and the quay is wall-to-wall tourists’ shops, cafés and bars. Not really our kind of place. To cap it all, they have no internet access. Their Wifi is coming on 15th August! Fat lot of good to us. We’re going to have to pedal off to Noirmoutier sur L’Ile in order to find some kind of interweb so that we can continue to pore over weather forecasts in the hope of getting across Biscay. If we don’t manage it in the next week or two, we’re going to have to go the Plan C and take the canals.

The good news is we found a restaurant here which has a vegetarian set meal for €20. As it is the only place in the whole of France (as far as we know) that caters for Veggies, or even admits that they exist, we're going to have to go and try it.

It's also very hot here. I'm suffering a little from an excess of sun yesterday, so I'm going to break out the sunhat.

Bad Hair Day in Port-Louis

We’re still here in Port-Louis, but I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to write, as I’m trying to get over a very bad haircut. We didn’t do “At the hairdressers” for my French O Level, which was 40 years ago, and the coiffeuse had less English than my French. It was so bad that I went back two days later and asked her to try again. She gave it another going over, but it was too late then. She’d already cut some bits too short. I think it may be terminal, or at least several months in recuperation. Hopefully it will get so hot that I have to wear my sunhat.

We received the charts we were waiting for, and some spokes arrived, but they were the wrong ones. However, we managed, using the French integrated public transport system, where you buy a ticket for €1.25 and it lasts an hour on any buses, including the water buses (or Batobus – get it?), to get to Lorient and a big bike shop which had the correct size spokes. Andy has now replaced 4 broken ones on my back wheel (I’m not really that heavy) and we are fully mobile again. We had actually been getting around to the supermarché, etc, using the bikes provided free by the Bureau du Port. I don’t know if any other marinas offer this service, but this is the only place we’ve ever come across it. I must emphasise how impressed we were, though, with the cheapness and effectiveness of the bus system. Lorient had a noticeable lack of traffic congestion, and a lot of people using the buses.

The seaward approach to Lorient is dominated by the massive concrete submarine pens built by the Germans under Admiral Dönitz during WWII to house their UBoots. The Americans tried to destroy the pens, but didn’t make much impression on them, so they bombed the city almost out of existence in order to cut off the supply lines for fuel, food, water and power in order to stop the Germans deploying their UBoots. Lorient was rebuilt as a pleasant modern city with wide boulevards and squares. The concrete pens are now mainly used for a variety of other purposes, including housing the lifeboats, but they are a chilling reminder of what an unhappy time that was for the French. Next to them is the biggest marina I have ever seen full of the largest, fastest sailing vessels know to man. It makes Cowes look like small fry. There were several of those enormous trimarans like the one Ellen McArthur used to knock around in. You know when a boat goes fast, because it has lots of big corporate logos emblazoned all over it.

We are now waiting for a big enough weather window to get across Biscay and to northern Spain. We need a good three days and three nights of not too much wind, not too little and not in the wrong direction. Not asking much? At the moment there are a series of low pressure systems crossing the Atlantic, into Biscay and hitting the French coast just about where our boat is moored. These are bringing strong winds, rain and the wind is mainly from the South West, which is where we want to go. We don’t fancy three days and three nights of wind on the nose and bashing into waves, which stop the boat, causing the wind to spill from the sails, not to mention the pouring rain and being up to 200 miles from the nearest lifeboat.

So we wait. It’s a nice enough place to be. We haven’t even done the museums yet. We’ve been entertained by a film show one night, where films about the tradition of boat-building and fishing in Brittany were projected onto the sails of an old wooden fishing boat, accompanied by musicians playing Breton bagpipes and another ancient wind instrument, like the thing they blow into on the bag pipe, but without the bag. There is a terrific street market on Tuesday nights until very late, which everyone seems to attend and there is music played outside the bars and lots of stalls selling stuff we don’t want. Yesterday we saw a whole band of bagpipers, pipers, drummers, brass section and their dogs ‘n’ all, practising while marching round the local sports ground. We still think there IS only one tune, repeated as necessary.

Meantime the search for a restaurant which has one vegetarian main course on the menu continues in vain. I had the boat stocked up with sailing snacks ready for the epic voyage, but Andy keeps eating them. Grrrr!

Blog from Port Louis - Sunday 27th July 2008

In Concarneau it got hot. We had a swim. It was cold. There’s no Gulf Stream here.

We were also very busy trying to organise a few things. Up till Concarneau we’d been happily bumbling along from port to port enjoying not going to work, buying French food, just doing what we do when we’re on holiday, only this time we don’t have to go back home again. We got here and began to realise that we have to make plans to set off across Biscay at some point. We had bought charts for the French coast, but hadn’t seen any available in the chandlers for the north and west coasts of Spain. We assumed we’d be able to buy them in France. We find, after a lot of hot walking, that we can’t. A couple of hours Googling in the café Les Moutons , with free WiFi, but not free bière, some reading up in our Pilot Books and the Nautical Almanac, and we have eventually ordered some Admiralty charts from England to be sent to us. We had to choose a place to get them sent to, knowing they’d take about a week to arrive. We chose Port-Louis, just across the estuary from Lorient.

We were also doing interweb research to locate spokes for my bike. The shop we bought them from in Malmesbury said they’d send us some.

Concarneau is the biggest town we’ve been in since leaving Poole. It has an interesting “Ville Close”, which is a medieval fortified town on an island in the middle of the harbour, accessed by drawbridge. We had a wander round but found the number of tourists’ shops underwhelming. How many striped shirts did those ancient Breton fishermen need? Didn’t they realise that, after all those crèpes, moule frites, kouign amann and American-sized glacés, they really could never get away with horizontal stripes? Why would they want to have their photograph taken with a Johnny Depp look-alike pirate? Was he a Breton?

We were stopped in our tracks by the homme entertaining the crowd with his performing chickens. I say “performing”, if that’s what you call it when you tie a rooster to a small bicycle and push it along a mini high-wire. I couldn’t help wondering if they wouldn’t prefer being force-fed in an overcrowded battery? At least they are blessed with a quicker release when Bernard Matthews turns them into nuggets.

Wednesday night in Concarneau is a big market and we went ashore to listen to the blues duo playing outside Les Moutons. We played “name that tune” again and wandered off to look at the market. We saw our first (and probably last) traditional Breton dancing. It’s a cross between line-dancing and circle-dancing, with less aplomb, done to the plaintive strain of the Breton bagpipe. We didn’t join in. We went back to the blues duo and demonstrated to the natives how to shake a leg with our dazzling display of jiving on the pavement. (Particularly difficult to spin in all-terrain sandals.) Another British couple from the marina joined in. That showed them.

Next day we left Concarneau for Les Iles de Glénan. Only a three hour sail in the sun, but a world away. They are a nature reserve and mainly used for teaching kids to sail. The Pilot Book says they are “as close to the Caribbean as you can get in S Brittany”. Well, Mike and Gill Barron, you have evidently never been there. Although on a sunny day the shoal waters over the white sand are clear and turquoise, there the resemblance ends. There was a decided lack of tepid sea to swim in, palm trees for shade, rum reggae and mangoes. However, we didn’t expect any of that. We anchored there for a night and dinghyed ashore. It was lovely after the bustle of Concarneau to get away from it all, relax and gather our wits. No tarmac, no shops. Lots of birds and rabbits. Concarneau had been frazzling, not just the heat and bustle, traffic and shops, trying to sort out what, where and when we were going to go in Spain, finding we couldn’t get the charts we wanted, not having my bike meant that everything took ages to sort out: I found I was having a crisis of confidence. What are we doing? Why? Let’s go through the canals and forget Biscay and the inhospitable north Spanish coast. I don’t want to go all the way round Spain and Portugal. It’s too far, too expensive. We don’t know what we’re doing.

The Iles de Glénan put it all back into perspective. We stick to the original plan. We’ve got charts on their way. It’ll be fine. We weren’t even put off by waking up on Friday morning to see a yacht resting at an ungainly angle on the rocks about 500m away with the Lifeboat anchored nearby. We drank coffee and watched as the lifeboat men in a rib attached a rope to the yacht and waited for the tide to lift it enough for the big lifeboat to tow it off. After a bit of messing around with ropes and presumably checking that there were no big holes in the hull, they towed it back to the mainland. As other anchored yachtsmen around us woke up, they never knew what a near disaster they hadn’t witnessed.

We set sail for Port-Louis, which contains 5 marinas and the city of Lorient. We had a good sail for most of the way, with the wind on our beam. It died off for a bit, then got up again later as we sailed towards the Ile de Groix and a big bank of rain. The vis dropped as we got into the area where the big ships come in and out of Lorient and we had trouble spotting the navigational buoys. I was glad to drop the mainsail which had been shedding sheets of rainwater into the cockpit for the last hour or two, and we got safely into the harbour, wet through. It was much smaller than we’d thought and the most ramshackle place we’ve seen this side of the Atlantic. We peeled off wet oilies and put up the “tent” over the cockpit. Once the rain had eased off in the evening we went ashore to the Capitainerie to explain that we are awaiting some packages from England to arrive at their office. The Bureau du Port is a semi-derelict shed. The toilets and showers unspeakably old-fashioned (and smelly). We are surrounded by working fishing boats. I was trying to fill in the details of our boat on the form in the office but was too distracted by the some music. My entrails were stirred and my soul thrilled to a blues guitar solo which was streaming out of Youtube courtesy of the Bureau du Port’s internet connection. The charming young man behind the counter told me it was Paul Personne, the best blues guitarist ever. I can recommend it. We knew we were in the right place to spend a few days and await our post from Blighty. A quick explore of this little town confirmed it. It’s on a peninsula which is fortified all round with ramparts, built to defend Lorient from the British and Spanish invaders. There are occasional reinforced oaken doors through the fortifications and you find yourself on a lovely beach. The town is completely unspoiled and has narrow cobbled streets. To top it all, the Port has 4 vélos which they lend out for free, and the showers, grotty as they are, have as much hot water as you want without having to buy a jeton. (The big expensive marinas often charge 2€ just for a 5 minute shower.)

The sun is shining and we’re happy. I’m not going to think about Biscay. I’m putting my fingers in my ears and going la la la.